The son of a friend of is very good at solving the Rubik’s cube and takes part in the annual national contest to see who is the best in the US. In successive years he has come in 3rd, 2nd, 4th and 5th, but frustratingly has never won.
Here is a video of someone solving it in competition in 6.77 seconds.
What I learned recently is that the contest also has a category where people are required to solve the puzzle with their feet! Here is someone solving it in 31.56 seconds.
Being somewhat of a klutz myself with quite poor small motor skills, I find this amazing.
You have to be a bit cautious about YouTube videos of people claiming to be able to solve the puzzle quickly with their feet or hands. Some of them are hoaxes where they start out with an ordered cube, make it disordered while filming it, and then run the video in reverse. Make sure there is a lot of background stuff going on which unambiguously indicate forward time, and that there are no cuts.
Its hard to admit but I was in junior high school when the rubik’s cube craze hit. I entered into a competition held by the math department and came in 5th place. That was with a time of 1 minute 56 seconds. IIRC, the winning time was 19 seconds.
For my effort I got a small certificate and a t-shirt that said, ‘I conquered the cube.’ And of course, a permanent membership in the nerd club.
I am always amazed at those who have the ability to solve the rubik’s cube puzzles.
6.77 sec !!!!
The human brain (at least that boy’s brain…) is awesome.
I would be happy if could solve it no matter what time it would take 😉
There’s a student in the med school here who is a cube champ. I saw him solve one while waiting for class to start. It took him less than a minute. My granfather gave me one years ago, when the crax first hit. I couldn’t solve it the traditional way, so I took it apart and put it back together solved. He was very proud of me.